Randomly-chosen chores

[telophase]

On Day 2 of a chores experiment. We have a bad habit of saying things like "Oh, yes, we need to run the Roomba in this room" and not doing it for days or weeks until the crud and cat hair has built up to the point where it chokes the Roomba and we have to send it through once or twice more. I'd heard of the Fly Lady's e-mail thing where they send out a daily e-mail with instructions to do such-and-such today and that appealed to me, although the Fly Lady ethos did not.*

So I tweaked the basic script that I use for most of my random generators, which came from http://www.seventhsanctum.com, worked out how to set up a cron job that would run the script once a day and e-mail the results to me and myrialux, and for the past two mornings we've woken up to a list of three randomly-chosen chores to do. And it's worked so far - yesterday I dusted my office and collected trash from around the house (including the litterboxes because they were overdue), and though we didn't Roomba the media section of the living room alst night because myrialux had a deep and abiding need to spend several hours playing Fallout: New Vegas, we did that this morning along with the other chores we got (clean litterboxes, which I'd already done so woo! free day, Roomba the other half of the living room, and go through the pantry to toss anything that's past its sell-by date and rearrange the rest).




I'm not pointing you to the script, because if you load it, it will automatically send e-mails to Toby and I. :) If you want to know the list of chores, however, here it is:

Vacuum the house with one of the big vacuum cleaners
Roomba the kitchen
Roomba the kitchen
Roomba the reading nook area of the living room
Roomba the reading nook area of the living room
Roomba the media area of the living room
Roomba the media area of the living room
Roomba Toby office
Roomba Toby office
Roomba the dining/craft area
Roomba the dinding/craft area
Roomba the hall and hall bathroom
Roomba the hall and hall bathroom
Roomba the master bedroom
Roomba the master bedroom
Roomba the spare bedroom
Roomba the spare bedroom
Roomba Stephanie office (move litterboxes so it can get back there)
Roomba Stephanie office (move litterboxes so it can get back there)
Dust living room
Dust Toby office
Dust dining room
Dust Stephanie office
Dust master & spare bedrooms
Dust living room
Dust Toby office
Dust dining room
Dust Stephanie office
Dust master & spare bedrooms
15-minute declutter: kitchen 1 (cabinets and counters)
15-minute declutter: kitchen 2 (breakfast nook and carts)
15-minute declutter: living room
15-minute declutter: dining room
15-minute declutter: Toby office
15-minute declutter: Stephanie office
15-minute declutter: spare bedroom
15-minute declutter: master bedroom and closets
15-minute declutter: entry closet
15-minute declutter: garage
Check freezer for stuff to toss
Check fridge for stuff to toss
Check pantry for stuff to toss
Wash kitchen counters and cooktop
Clean bathrooms: shower/tub
Clean bathrooms: sink/counter/mirror
Clean bathrooms: toilet
Clean bathrooms: floor
Collect trash from around the house
Collect trash from around the house
Collect trash from around the house
Collect trash from around the house
Clean litterboxes
Clean litterboxes
Clean litterboxes
Clean litterboxes

The multiple entries on the list are a cheap-ass form of weighting the results: we need to clean out the litterboxes more often than, say, look in the fridge for stuff that looks back and toss it. It also doesn't have stuff that we do on a frequent and irregular basis like laundry and dishwashing, because it seemed a bit odd. I might add them later if they seem to be useful. There's lots of Roomba-ing in there was well, because (a) we have cats and (b) Toby seems to have a lot of pretty bad allergies, and I want to see if running it more frequently helps him. I'll also be playing with the weighting as the days pass and we get a better sense of how often stuff recurs and how often we really need to do it.

If it comes up with something that we've already done recently, like telling us to Roomba the living room again tomorrow, or duplicates one of the other randomly-chosen chores for that day, we get to skip it and consider it a free (part of the) day. The 15-minute declutter is also something yanked from the Fly Lady, because I figure I can handle setting a timer and working for that long if I don't have to do anything else.

I might eventually go back to the script and rewrite it to be slightly more complicated, so that, say, on Tuesdays it tells us to collect trash and recycling from around the house because the trash pickup is on Wednesdays. But I'm OK with this for now.

If any of you want to try something similar, let me know. With a list of chores or other things you want/need to do on a regular basis and your time zone, I can set another script up to mail you daily in the wee hours. If you've got your own server, you can set it up yourself.






* "Get dressed to your shoes before starting chores." Oh, honey, no. They'd never get done then.

Comments

[elainegrey]

Heh, i have something i call "dungeons and deskwork" where i write down twenty chores (with the same weighting technique you've implemented) and roll the twenty sided die. For me, though, it's twenty things i figure i ned to do but cant prioritize, including correspondence and other tasks. It helps when i use it. 8)

[telophase]

XD Somewhere online I ran across a system where chores are given points and you compete against others in the household - it's got a DnD-type theme to it.

[thistleingrey]

Chore Wars, maybe?

I can't tell from the final lines whether you're offering to share a copy of the script itself (minus e-mail addresses and such), but if you are, I'd love to see it; stack at reqfd net is a working address for me.

darkforge has the programming ability to put such a thing together, and he has said occasionally that he ought to make such a thing, but he hasn't. :) (And, predictably, between the two of us he has the greater trouble with remembering to rotate through recurring household tasks.)

[telophase]

Yup, Chore Wars, that's it. :)

Perfectly willing to share it, as it's using the basewords.php script written by Dragonscholar at seventhsanctum.com. I'll send it on to ya. :)

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

I did something similar recently: http://roll.tprjones.com/roll.php

Although mine's a bit different. It's a list of 24 entries, only half of which is chores with the rest being fun stuff. And it's weighted so that Tuesday & Thursday are much more likely to be chores while Friday & Saturday are much more likely to be fun. The rest of the days are slightly biased one way or the other as well.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Looks nifty! How's it been working for you? Ours has been working for the three days it's been active, but I know the crux will come in a couple of weeks when the newness has worn off and we get tired of it. :) (I suppose I could throw in a reward or two, or a free day to spice it up...)

[chomiji]

The hilarious thing is that I spent a couple of hours doing much the same thing with a spreadsheet last week. I'll have to take a closer look at yours here tomorrow.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hee! Something must be in the air!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

This is a really good idea! I hope it works well!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I know the crux will be in a couple of weeks when the newness has worn off and we get tired of it ... can we keep it going at that point?